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Charlotte Fox, climber of the tallest peaks, survivor of 1996 Everest disaster, dies after an apparent fall at home, age 61

I didn’t see how we were going to get out of it alive,” Fox told Jon Krakauer in his book “Into Thin Air,” which recounted the infamous 1996 blizzard that stranded climbers for one freezing night, leaving eight dead. “The cold was so painful, I didn’t think I could endure it anymore. I just curled up in a ball and hoped death would come quickly.”

Instead, she would survive through the night and live 22 more years to scale countless mountains around the world. The experience on Mount Everest the night of May 10, 1996 may have made Fox and her fellow climbers celebrities for a time, but for Fox it was but a rung on the ladder in a life of great heights.

That’s why, when she died last week at home in Telluride, Colo., from an apparent fall from the top of her stairs, her friends were in disbelief. She had just turned 61. Her birthday was May 10.

C.M. Newton, a Hall of Fame athletic director and coach whose basketball career spanning more than 50 years as a player and administrator, died June 4 at 88.

Officials at the University of Kentucky, where he had been a member of the 1951 NCAA championship squad, announced his death but did not disclose a cause or where he died.

Mr. Newton was 509-375 as a coach at Transylvania University, Alabama and Vanderbilt and worked on several NCAA Division I basketball committees. He also influenced selection of the original U.S. Olympic “Dream Team” in 1992.

As Kentucky’s athletic director, his hiring of eventual Hall of Famer Rick Pitino as men’s basketball coach helped the Wildcats overcome NCAA sanctions to win the 1996 national title.

Richard Valeriani, an NBC News correspondent who was a familiar presence on television for more than three decades, covering events like the civil rights movement, John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Henry A. Kissinger’s globe-trotting diplomatic missions, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.

Matt (Guitar) Murphy, a master bluesman who played with Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James, Chuck Berry and Memphis Slim but was best known as a member of the Blues Brothers band, died on Friday in Miami. He was 88.

Mr. Ditko was an illustrator of remarkable flair whose colorful tales of superhuman characters made him one of the most innovative and revered artists in the world of comics. He also worked in the fantasy and horror genres and created an array of other heroic figures, but he was known above all for creating the lasting visuals of Spider-Man.

Mr. Ditko supplied the illustrations and, eventually, much of the story line of “Spider-Man,” while Lee wrote the dialogue. The comic proved to be so popular that it soon became a separate franchise and ultimately evolved into a daily newspaper comic strip and a series of Hollywood blockbuster films.